Studio Matters Reviews Francis Cunningham's Jerusalem Exhibiton

A few weeks ago we wrote about the Jerusalem's Barbur Gallery showing In the Finest of Company, an exhibition including works by Francis Cunningham in "the finest company" of students, teachers, friends: Pesach Slabosky, Nomi Bruckmann, Avi Sabah, Masha Zusman, Yanai Segal, George Grosz.

Francis Cunningham could not attend the show, so we were happy to find a blog entry on Studio Matters, maintained by Maureen Mullarkey, reviewing the Jerusalem show.  The review by the guest blogger, Heddy Breuer Abramowitz, details the reasons for bringing all the artists together, which are personal and professional. Heddy Breuer Abramowitz starts off by pointing out a view of "disdain towards teaching that reduces those who shape future generations to ones that haven’t made the grade."  The rest of the review clearly questions such a view.

Here are two installation photos giving some idea about how the show is organized.  We are hoping to see and post here some more images of the works by all the artists, side-by-side.

Francis Cunningham's paintng of Pesach Slabosky and Pesach Slabosky's drawing of Francis Cunningham.

Pesach Slabosky's painting and one of the student works hanged between the main works.

New three-figure piece, progress report in pictures.

It's been almost a year since Dick started the most recent figure piece. We've been trying to document it at various stages. Below we go chronologically to show the process in a few images.

As always for a large work, Dick starts with a map.

The map. December 2009

The map is transferred to the canvas and followed by an under-painting.

Partial underpainting. December 2009

Here are the first color spots.

First spot. December 2009

Color-value relationships (color spots) are  abstracted directly from the appearance of nature.  Every edge is defined by color-value on either side of the edge. Three-dimensional form and space are produced by these visually observed relationships.

3.31.2010

Israel Hershberg remarked on how abstract the process is.

10.28.2010

Many sessions later, the painting is still in progress.

Vilhelm Hammershoi Exhibition Catalog

Today I'm posting a video, which we hope will be the beginning of a new series of video art books and catalogs reviews by Francis Cunningham. We used Dick's no longer brand new, still digital camera.
This series was inspired by a magazine review series by graphic designer Michael Bojkowski in London called Reading List.

So here is the Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershoi's 1997 Copenhagen, Ordrupgaard
Museum and Musee d'Orsay exhibition catalog review.